TEXT ORGANIZATION: The main text should begin on a separate page and should be divided into separate sections. For Research articles, the preparation of the main text must be structured into separate sections as Introduction, Materials and Methodology, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. For Review and Letter articles, the manuscript should be divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the Acknowledgement (if any) and Reference sections. The review article should mention any previous important reviews in the field and contain a comprehensive discussion starting with the general background of the field. It should then go on to discuss the salient features of recent developments. The authors should avoid presenting material which has already been published in a previous review. The manuscript style must be uniform throughout the text and 10 pt Times New Roman font should be used. The full term for an abbreviation should precede its first appearance in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement. The reference numbers should be given in square brackets in the text. Italics should be used for Binomial names of organisms (Genus and Species), for emphasis and for unfamiliar words or phrases. Non-assimilated words from Latin or other languages should also be italicized e.g. in vivo, in vitro, per se, et al. etc. Protein and Nucleic acid sequences may be included and should conform to International databases. Genomic and Proteomic studies may be included and should conform to International databases.

It is advisable that the observations be presented and discussed in brief. Make available all products that they generate such as protein, DNA, clone, cell or other types of material that they describe to other investigators in the field who require them for bona fide purposes. This should be done with the spirit that the data that are published can be duplicated and that other ideas can be tested. For research involving human subjects, authors must name the committee(s) that approved the experiments in the Materials and methods section of the paper and include with their submission a statement to confirm that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

MICROARRAY DATA: The authors will be required to submit the Microarray experiment data to the ArrayExpress using the MIAMExpress submission tool (www.ebi.ac.uk/miamexpress), which will be subjected to reviewing by the curation team and if accepted, an ArrayExpress accession number would be assigned for it. The ArrayExpress offers the facility to maintain the data until the related paper is published.

Microarray data should be made available for reviewers and editors at the time of manuscript submission in a MIAME compliant and widely accessible format. Submission of large raw and/or analyzed microarray data files as supplementary data to the journal should be discouraged, which may alternatively be submitted either to the Gene Expression Omnibus http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/ or ArrayExpress http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress repositories, thereby obtaining an accession number for the journal and any necessary passwords, to facilitate the reviewers and editors of a manuscript to access the data. The submission of the microarray data to either of these repositories should be done at or before acceptance of a paper for publication, with accession number being allotted well before publication.

Nomenclature:

The authors are encouraged to use standardized nomenclature wherever necessary:

• The SI units should be used; if not exclusively, please provide the SI value in parentheses after each value.
• Species names should be italicized (e.g., Homo sapiens). The generic name of a species should be given in full the first time it appears in the text.
The author authority for each species is desirable on its first mention.
Chemical formulae may not be used as abbreviations in the text.
• Genes, mutations, genotypes, and alleles should also be indicated in italics but the protein product of a gene should be in Roman type. Use the recommended name by consulting the appropriate genetic nomenclature database, e.g., HUGO for human genes. It is sometimes advisable to indicate the synonyms for the gene the first time it appears in the text. Gene prefixes such as those used for oncogenes or cellular localization should be shown in roman: v-fes, c-MYC, etc.
• The Recommended International Non-Proprietary Name (rINN) of drugs should be provided.
• In case of usage of symbols that do not conform to those that have previously appeared in the literature, their aliases may be obtained from the approved nomenclature in the HGNC (HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee) [http://www.genenames.org/] and LocusLink, to allow retrieval of all the information available for each gene.

Taxonomic nomenclature: The Latin name and taxonomic authority (e.g. Linnaeus) should be given for all experimental species. Chemical nomenclature must conform to the Subject Index of Chemical Abstracts.

Accession Numbers:

All appropriate datasets, images, and information should be deposited in public resources. Please provide the relevant accession numbers (and version numbers, if appropriate) and any necessary passwords to enable the reviewers and editors of a manuscript to access the data.

Providing accession numbers facilitates linking to and from the established databases and integrates the article with a broader collection of scientific information, therefore list all accession numbers should be listed directly after the Supporting Information section.

All accession numbers for all entities such as genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc., for which there is an entry in a public database should be included in the manuscript. Experimental data should be submitted to the appropriate databases, with a release date corresponding to the date of publication.

Greek Symbols and Special Characters: Greek symbols and special characters often undergo formatting changes and get corrupted or lost during preparation of manuscript for publication. To ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, these special characters should be inserted as a symbol but should not be a result of any format styling (Symbol font face) otherwise they will be lost during conversion to PDF/XML².

Authors are encouraged to consult reporting guidelines. These guidelines provide a set of recommendations comprising a list of items relevant to their specific research design. All kinds of measurements should be reported only in International System of Units (SI).

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS: Abbreviations use should be restricted to a minimum. All non-standard abbreviations should be listed in alphabetical order, along with their expanded form, defining them upon the first use in the text. Non-standard abbreviations should not be used unless they appear at least three times in the text. If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Financial contributions to the work being reported should be clearly acknowledged, as should any potential conflict of interest.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Please acknowledge anyone (individual/company/institution) who has contributed to the study by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content. Please list the source(s) of funding for the study, for each author, and for the manuscript preparation in the acknowledgements section.

This journal complies with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals www.icmje.org and the FDA's Good Reprint Practices for the Distribution of Medical Journal Articles and Medical or Scientific Reference Publications on Unapproved New Uses of Approved Drugs and Approved or Cleared Medical Devices http://www.fda.gov/oc/op/goodreprint.html

REFERENCES: References must be listed in the numerical system (Vancouver). All references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section. The reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission.

See below few examples of references listed in the correct Vancouver style:

Typical Paper Reference:
[1] Stokstad E. Ornithology. Gambling on a ghost bird. Science 2007; 317: 888-92.

[2] Rubenstein DR, Lovette IJ. Temporal Environmental Variability Drives the Evolution of Cooperative Breeding in Birds. Curr Biol 2007; 17: 1414-19.

Typical Chapter Reference:
[3] Reed JM, Boulinier T, Danchin E, Oring LW In: Nolan V, Thompson C, Ed. Prospecting by Birds for Breeding Site, New York, Plenum publishers 1999; 189-259.

Book Reference:
[4] Baicich PJ, Harrison CO. A guide to the nests, eggs, and nestlings of North American birds. 2^nd ed. San Diego:Academic Press 1997.

Edited Book:
[5] Ken A, Otter, Eds. The ecology and behavior of chickadees and titmice : an integrated approach. New York: Oxford University Press 2007.

Conference Paper:
[6] Oschadleus HD, Underhill LG. Wetlands and Development Studies of Migratory Waterbirds. In: Beintema A, van Vessen J, Eds. Proceeding of the 2nd Conference; 1999: Dakar, Wetlands International Publication 1999; pp. 53-7.

Conference Proceedings:
[7] Harris AH, Ed. Economics and health: 1997: Proceedings of the 19th australian conference of health economists; 1997 Sep 13-14; Sydney, Australia. Kensington, N.S.W.: School of Health Services Management, University of New South Wales 1998.

Journal Article on the Internet:
[8] Moszynski P. Africa is ill equipped to fight a bird flu epidemic 2006. BMJ [serial on the Internet]. 2006 Feb 18; [cited 2006 February 18]; 380: [about 10 screens]. Available from: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/332/7538/380-b

Book/Monograph on the Internet:
[9] Donaldson MS, Ed. Measuring the quality of health care [monograph on the internet]. Washington: National Academy Press 1999. [cited 2004 Oct 8]. Available from: http://legacy.netlibrary.com/

Web site / Homepage:
[10] USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center [homepage on the Internet]. Appleton WI: USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Breeding Season Preparations; 2007 [updated 2007 Sept 7; cited 2007 Sept 5]. Available from: http://whoopers.usgs.gov/

Journal with Part / Supplement:
If a journal carries continuous pagination throughout the volume, then the issue number can be omitted.

Issue with Supplement:
[11] Storch I. Conservation status of grouse worldwide: An update. Wildlife Biology 2007; 13(Suppl 1): S5-12.

Volume with Part:
[12] Abend SM, Kulish N. The psychoanalytic method from an epistemological viewpoint. Int J Psychoanal 2002; 83(Pt 2): 491-5.

Issue with Part:
[13] Etterson MA, Etterson JR, Cuthbert FJ. A robust new method for analyzing community change and an example using 83 years of avian response to forest succession . Biological Conservation 2007; 138(4 Pt 3): 381-89.

Patent:
[14] Coroneos DL, inventor. Anti-squirrel bird feeder. United States patent US 6918353. 2005 July.

E-citations:
[15] Citations for articles/material published exclusively online or in open access (free-to-view) , must contain the exact Web addresses (URLs) at the end of the reference(s), except those posted on an author’s Web site unless editorially essential, e.g. ‘Reference: Available from: URL’.

Some important points to remember:

*All references must be complete and accurate.
*If the number of authors exceeds six then et al. will be used after three names (the term “et al.” should be in italics).
*Online citations should include the date of access.
*Journal abbreviations should follow the Index Medicus/MEDLINE.
*Take special care of the punctuation convention as described in the above-mentioned examples.
*Avoid using superscript in the in-text citations and reference section.
*Abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications (which can only be included if prior permission has been obtained) should not be given in the reference section but they may be mentioned in the text and details provided as footnotes.
*The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.

APPENDICES: In case there is a need to present lengthy, but essential methodological details, use appendixes, which can be a part of the article. An appendix must not exceed three pages (Times New Roman, 12 point fonts, 900 max. words per page).The information should be provided in a condensed form, ruling out the need of full sentences. A single appendix should be titled APPENDIX, while more than one can be titled APPENDIX A, APPENDIX B, and so on.

FIGURES/ ILLUSTRATIONS: The authors should provide the illustrations as separate files, as well as embedded in the text file, numbered consecutively in the order of their appearance. Each figure should include a single illustration. No charges will be levied on the use of color figures except in the reprints. Each figure should be closely cropped to minimize the amount of white space surrounding the illustration.

If a figure consists of separate parts, it is important that a single composite illustration file be submitted, containing all parts of the figure.

Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate, as well as high-resolution component files.

Scaling/ Resolution:

For Line Art image type, which is generally an image based on lines and text and does not contain tonal or shaded areas, the preferred file format is TIFF or EPS, with colour mode being Monochrome 1-bit or RGB, in a resolution of 900-1200 dpi.

For Halftone image type, which is generally a continuous tone photograph and contains no text, the preferred file format is TIFF, with colour mode being or RGB or Grayscale, with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

For Combination image type, which is generally an image containing halftone in addition to text or line art elements, the preferred file format is TIFF, with colour mode being or RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 500-900 dpi.

Formats:

For illustrations, the following file formats are acceptable:

• Illustrator
• EPS (preferred format for diagrams)
• PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)
• PNG (preferred format for photos or images)
• Microsoft Word (version 5 and above; figures must be a single page)
• PowerPoint (figures must be a single page)
• TIFF
• JPEG (conversion should be done using the original file)
• BMP
• CDX (ChemDraw)
• TGF (ISISDraw)

Bentham OPEN does not process figures submitted in GIF format.

If the large size of TIFF or EPS figures acts as an obstacle to online submission, authors may find that conversion to JPEG format before submission results in significantly reduced file size and upload time, while retaining acceptable quality. JPEG is a 'lossy' format, however. In order to maintain acceptable image quality, it is recommended that JPEG files are saved at High or Maximum quality.

Files should not be compressed with tools such as Zipit or Stuffit prior to submission as these tools will in any case produce negligible file-size savings for JPEGs and TIFFs, which are already compressed.

Please do not:

1.	Supply embedded graphics in your word processor (spreadsheet, presentation) document;
2.	Supply files that are optimized for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); the resolution is too low;
3.	Supply files that are too low in resolution;
4.	Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Image Conversion Tools:

There are many software packages, many of them freeware or shareware, capable of converting to and from different graphics formats, including PNG.

Good general tools for image conversion include GraphicConverter on the Macintosh, PaintShop Pro, for Windows, and ImageMagick, which is available on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX platforms.

Note that bitmap images (e.g. screenshots) should not be converted to EPS, since this will result in a much larger file size than the equivalent JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP, with no increase in quality. EPS should only be used for images produced by vector-drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Most vector-drawing applications can be saved in, or exported as, EPS format. In case the images have been originally prepared in an Office application, such as Word or PowerPoint, then the original Office files should be directly uploaded to the site, instead of being converted to JPEG or another format that may be of low quality.

Chemical Structures: Chemical structures MUST be prepared according to the guidelines below.

Structures should be prepared in ChemDraw and provided as separate file, submitted both on disk and in printed formats.

Structure Drawing Preferences:

[As according to the ACS style sheet]

Drawing Settings:

Chain angle       120°

Bond spacing    18% of width

Fixed length       14.4 pt (0.500cm, 0.2in)

Bold width          2.0 pt (0.071cm, 0.0278in)

Line width           0.6 pt (0.021cm, 0.0084in)

Margin width      1.6 pt (0.096cm)

Hash spacing    2.5 pt (0.088cm, 0.0347in)

Text settings:

Font                    Times New Roman

Size                    8 pt

Under the Preference Choose:

Units                   points

Tolerances          3 pixels

Under Page Setup Use:

Paper                  US letter

Scale                 100%

TABLES:

*Data Tables should be submitted in Microsoft Word table format.
*Each table should include a title/caption being explanatory in itself with respect to the details discussed in the table. Detailed legends may then follow.
*Table number in bold font i.e. Table 1, should follow a title. The title should be in small case with the first letter in caps. A full stop should be placed at the end of the title.
*Tables should be embedded in the text exactly according to their appropriate placement in the submitted manuscript.
*Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring that the borders of each cell are displayed as black lines.
*Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals sequentially in order of their citation in the body of the text.
*If a reference is cited in both the table and text, please insert a lettered footnote in the table to refer to the numbered reference in the text.
*Tabular data provided as additional files can be submitted as an Excel spreadsheet.

SUPPORTIVE/ SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: We do encourage to append supportive material, for example a PowerPoint file containing a talk about the study, a PowerPoint file containing additional screenshots, a Word, RTF, or PDF document showing the original instrument(s) used, a video, or the original data (SAS/SPSS files, Excel files, Access Db files etc.) provided it is inevitable or endorsed by the journal's Editor.

Published/reproduced material should not be included unless you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder, which must be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance of your article for publication.

Supportive/Supplementary material intended for publication must be numbered and referred to in the manuscript but should not be a part of the submitted paper. In-text citations as well as a section with the heading "Supportive/Supplementary Material" before the "References" section should be provided. Here, list all Supportive/Supplementary Material and include a brief caption line for each file describing its contents.

Any additional files will be linked into the final published article in the form supplied by the author, but will not be displayed within the paper. They will be made available in exactly the same form as originally provided only on our Web site. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet). Supportive/ Supplementary material must be provided in a single zipped file not larger than 4 MB.

Authors must clearly indicate if these files are not for publication but meant for the reviewers'/editors' perusal only.

PERMISSION FOR REPRODUCTION: Published/reproduced material should not be included unless you have obtained written permission from the copyright holder, which should be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance of your article for publication.

For obtaining permission for reproducing any material published in an article by Bentham Science Publishers, please fill in the request FORM and send to tooenij@benthamopen.org for consideration.

AUTHORS AND INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATIONS: The author will be required to provide their full names, the institutional affiliations and the location, with an asterisk in front of the name of the principal/corresponding author. The corresponding author(s) should be designated and their complete address, business telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address must be stated to receive correspondence and galley proofs.

REVIEWING AND PROMPTNESS OF PUBLICATION: All manuscripts submitted for publication will be immediately subjected to peer-reviewing, usually in consultation with the members of the Editorial Advisory Board and a number of external referees. Authors may, however, provide in their Covering Letter the contact details (including e-mail addresses) of four potential peer reviewers for their paper. Any peer reviewers suggested should not have recently published with any of the authors of the submitted manuscript and should not be members of the same research institution.

All peer-reviewing will be conducted via the Internet to facilitate rapid reviewing of the submitted manuscripts. Every possible effort will be made to assess the manuscripts quickly with the decision being conveyed to the authors in due course.

LANGUAGE AND EDITING: Manuscripts submitted containing many English typographical errors will not be published. Manuscripts which are accepted for publication on condition that the written English submitted is corrected, will be sent a quote by Eureka Science, a professional language editing company. Authors from non-English language countries who have poor English language written skills, are advised to contact the language editing company prior to submitting their manuscript to the journal. Please contact Eureka Science for a language editing quote at e-mail: info@eureka-science.com stating the total number of words of the article to be edited.

PROOF CORRECTIONS: Authors are required to proofread the PDF versions of their manuscripts before submission. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked immediately for typographical errors and returned within 48 hours. Major changes are not acceptable at the proof stage. If unable to send corrections within 48 hours due to some reason, the author(s) must at least send an acknowledgement on receiving the galley proofs or the article will be published exactly as received and the publishers will not be responsible for any error occurring in the manuscript in this regard.

The corresponding author will be solely responsible for ensuring that the revised version of the manuscript incorporating all the submitted corrections receives the approval of all the authors of the manuscript.

COPYRIGHT: Authors who publish in Bentham OPEN Journals retain copyright to their work. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Covering Letter or the Terms and Conditions. It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors, if plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered. Once submitted to the journal, the author will not withdraw their manuscript at any stage prior to publication.

Articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution non-commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.


PUBLICATION FEES: The publication fee details for each article published in the journal are given below:

Letters: The publication fee for each published Letter article submitted is US $600.

Research Articles: The publication fee for each published Research article is US $800.

Mini-Review Articles: The publication fee for each published Mini Review article is US $600.

Review Articles: The publication fee for each published Review article is US $900.

Book Review: The open access fee for a published book review is US $450.

Once the paper is accepted for publication, the author will receive by email an electronic invoice. The fee form is also available on the Web site at www.benthamscience.com/open/feeform

MEMBERSHIP: Join as a member of Bentham Open today to obtain great discounts on your article publication fees! For details click here.

REPRINTS: High quality printed reprints of published articles are available for purchase, if ordered, with a minimum number of 100 reprints.

¹ The submission process is compatible with version 3.0 or later of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and with most other modern Web browsers. It can be used from PC, Mac, or Unix platforms.

² In this connection, we recommend the use of Microsoft Word version 2000 and above.